Study: Relative quiet helps poor rural children's verbal memory, but hurts their visual memory

Noise pollution—or lack of it—is the reason low-income rural children score better in verbal memory tests than low-income urban children. However, rural children perform worse than their urban counterparts in visual memory tests, according to a study by Dartmouth College, Priya Ramaiah reports for The Dartmouth, the college's student-run newspaper. Although there were differences between low-income rural and urban students, high-income rural and urban children had comparable scores.

(From The College Network Blog)

The tests, which were part of the Automated Working Memory Assessment, were given to 186 sixth-grade students from high-and-low-income rural areas, and high-and-low-income urban areas, Ramaiah writes. The study's author, education professor Michelle Tine, concluded that noise pollution—traffic, crowds, building signs, lights—has a negative affect on low-income urban children's working memory, while the lack of noise pollution helps low-income rural children's working memory. But lack of noise pollution hurts the visual memory of low-income rural children, who don't use the tool as much as low-income urban children, Tine concluded. This suggests that teachers in low-income rural areas should focus on verbal instruction, while teachers in low-income urban areas should focus on instruction through visuals. (Read more) The study is available online in the Journal of Cognition and Development, which is behind a pay wall.